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Back in the late 1950's in the Germantown area of Philadelphia there was a price war on icicles just before Christmas. The two businesses involved were Comer Paper (6241 Germantown Ave) and Doc's drugstore half a block south. Doc's is long gone but Comer is still in business. I think they usually had a price war on icicles (which I believe was motivated by just wanting to have a little fun) but sometime around 1959 they got carried away. Doc's advertised icicles at 15 cents. Comers countered with 12 cents, Doc's dropped to 9 cents, etc. over 2 or 3 days. Final prices were in the 1 cent range.

I remember the "icicles" back then being made of lead or something, unlike the wimpy mylar of today. If you put too many on a weak branch, it might break.
When we took the tree down on New Year's Day, they'd be stuck in the carpet. My brothers and I used to race to collect the strands. We'd squeeze them into a tight, and surprisingly heavy lead ball, which we would then toss at each other while my dad yelled at us to stop. Ah, the memories...

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo archive featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1960s. (Available as fine-art prints from the Shorpy Archive.) The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.